One of the men goes for her phone. The other grabs at her hands. Ozturk screams. Shock and fear ripple through her voice. Two masked women join them, tugging at her backpack, peeling the straps from her shoulders. “I’m going somewhere, I need to call someone,” she pleads. “We’re the police. Relax,” one of the men says in response.
They surround her. Then, one by one, they pull their neck gaiters up to cover their faces. “You don’t look like police,” a voice off screen says. “Why are you hiding your faces?” The questions continue, but the figures don’t respond. Instead, they cuff Ozturk, cross the street, and put her in an unmarked SUV. She is gone.
There is no guarantee this is an arrest.
These people are not showing that they are law enforcement. For all we know we just watched someone get kidnapped by sex traffickers.
Bystanders shouldn’t stand by idle, if someone is getting kidnapped right in front of you, and you’re able bodied, you should do something about it, violently. Even if it means grabbing the closest heavy thing and throwing it at them. Yell, make a scene, yell out “kidnappers help me!” …etc
NEVER LET YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE BE TAKEN TO A SECONDARY LOCATION. EVER.
Anything your captors are willing to do in public is only a fraction of what they would be willing to do in private.
You don’t necessarily have to put yourself in harms way, but you can still show some level of resistance to kidnappers, rapists, and the rest. No one should just let those things happen in front of them, and simply pull their phone out to film.
That’s some psycho pass level shit.
Unfortunately most people are not going to put their life on the line for you. For reference the advice to women being violently raped is to remain quiet and pee on their attacker or yell fire. Because people do not respond to the words help or rape.
So we start a movement by asking people to do something less, be a witness. Don’t let them just disappear people.
that’s easy to say bystanders shouldn’t stand idle, but the problem is that can escalate very quickly, you don’t know what these people are packing and sometimes the police don’t even interfere when they should (look at that incident on a NYC subway where some bystander stepped in to stop a mass stabbing, the police in the next cart over watching this unfold, did nothing until the perp was incapacitated, meanwhile the bystander was in ER, and looking at a bill only possibly paid off through GoFundMe donations).
I think recording anything is probably the best course of action like you said.